Tennis ecosystem in place to produce future stars

Bank of China Hong Kong Tennis Open 2025 was the showcase of the Hong Kong, China Tennis Association’s inaugural Hong Kong Tennis Season (HKTS). Combined with two professional women’s tournaments earlier this year, HKTS drew over 200,000 spectators to the Victoria Park Tennis Centre Court in the past 12 months.

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HKTS events and HKSI support are essential pillars of HKCTA’s elite athlete development ecosystem

Published: 12:00am, 16 Jan 2025

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2024 also saw the International Tennis Federation host its annual conference and AGM here with over 300 delegates from 109 countries and territories participating in the week-long event. Already, Hong Kong, China Tennis Association (HKCTA) events have generated hundreds of jobs and contributed millions of dollars to Hong Kong’s burgeoning events economy.

In the space of only a year, Hong Kong is now the most visible mega event organiser in the Greater Bay Area, and like the city’s top tennis stars, HKCTA is setting even higher goals.
While HKTS provides an important boost for the city’s mega events economy, its impact on developing tennis for elite athletes is less visible, but no less vital. It delivers irreplaceable opportunities for local athletes to challenge the world’s best on home soil.

The inaugural HKTS featured 31 players from China, over a third of them from HKCTA ranks. Most prominent amongst these is full-time touring professional Coleman Wong Chak-lam.

After making his home ATP debut at Bank of China Hong Kong Tennis Open (BOCHKTO) 2024, Wong went on to fly the city’s tennis flag worldwide, becoming the first player from Hong Kong to qualify for an ATP Masters 1000 event at the Miami Open and reaching the last sixteen of the ATP Hangzhou Open, as well as two finals and four semifinals on the ATP Challenger Tour. He reached a career-high ATP single’s ranking of No. 128 in the world last September, the highest position ever reached by a Hong Kong player.

HKSI support was vital in Coleman Wong’s rise to become the city’s highest ever ranked tennis athlete

Wong is one of the signature products of the HKCTA’s elite development programme, having first tried tennis at the very same venue where he took to Centre Court this month alongside some of the world’s best players.

Spearheaded by Eudice Chong and Cody Wong Hong-yi, the Hong Kong China women's team finished second at the Billie Jean King Cup Asia/Oceania Group II event to earn promotion to Group I in 2025.

HKCTA works assiduously to create links between HKTS events, its elite development programmes and wider community initiatives ‒ forging a pathway that can sustainably identify, inspire and produce future tennis stars.

Like so many other elite sports success stories in Hong Kong, the achievement of the city’s elite tennis athletes would not have been possible without the support of the Hong Kong Sports Institute (HKSI).

Tennis is a Tier A sport at HKSI, the funding support of which has been instrumental in driving the growth of players like Wong, who is a recipient of its Elite Training Grant, to professional level. But he is only the tip of the iceberg; 41 elite and aspiring tennis athletes are currently supported by HKSI funding, 35 of them at junior level.

HKCTA’s elite female team members are amongst 41 supported tennis athletes at HKSI

“The support tennis receives from HKSI has been invaluable in the development of the game here to an elite standard. It helped Coleman reach the highest levels of tennis, and it is even more essential now to support dozens of other athletes hoping to follow in his footsteps, and who are now competing at levels just below Coleman or at the junior level,” said HKCTA President Michael Cheng.

“Without the funding from HKSI, access to elite coaching support, local training facilities and state of the art sports science and nutrition would be very limited for athletes, as would their opportunities to play in overseas competitions. Tennis is a truly global sport that is highly competitive with most governing bodies around the world running elite development programmes. Hong Kong will lag behind without one,” added Cheng.

Ecosystem in action: BOCHKTO star Andrey Rublev inspires the next generation of aspiring tennis players

“Developing local athletes is a key driver behind our work to leverage tennis’ global platform in service of Hong Kong’s mega event economy. Not only can we deliver tangible return on the financial support we receive from HKSI and public sector through our events, we can harness the power of tennis to develop athletes to elite level and share the ethos and health benefits of the game with the entire community."

“With HKTS we now have a sustainable tennis ecosystem in place for the first time in the 115-year history of our association. That ecosystem consists of internationally recognised events that put Hong Kong on the tennis map worldwide while enhancing our elite athletes’ abilities and opportunities and ensuring a healthy intake of new players to the sport."

With Hong Kong’s rising stars fully stepping up to the challenge, the final pieces of the puzzle are in place for Cheng.

“We have achieved crucial and hard-earned momentum in all aspects of the game. Tennis is set to experience stratospheric growth, and we need to harness that for Hong Kong and Hong Kong athletes. We look forward to continuing to work with HKSI and our partners in the government to deliver returns on and off the court,” Cheng added.